Get in a Good Habit: Back Up Your Data
If you don't back up your entire hard drive, you should at least protect the vital bits. Here's how to get started.Lincoln Spector
Where is your important data? On your hard drive? Good. Where else? If your answer is "What do you mean, where else?" you're violating the First Law of Safe Computing: Never have only one copy of anything. If your documents, address books, worksheets, and photos are worth keeping, they're worth backing up.
Thanks to the proliferation of writable CD and DVD drives, USB storage devices, and hard drives the size of Wisconsin, backing up has never been easier. Whether you back up to an external hard drive (easy, dependable, but not cheap); an extra partition on your existing hard drive (easy, cheap, but no protection against a hard-drive crash or a stolen computer); or CD-RW, DVD-RW, or DVD+RW discs (dependable, cheap if you already own the drive, but not quite as easy), you should be backing up.
One problem with backing up to CD-RW (and to a lesser extent, DVD), is that one disc may not hold everything you need to back up, forcing you to sit at your computer waiting for a cue to swap discs. Another problem is that Windows doesn't see a CD or a DVD as something it can write to (Windows XP does--sort of--but not in a reliable way). Most of the backup programs I recommend here can't write directly to these discs without the use of special packet-writing software that runs in the background, disguising your drive as a giant floppy. The good news is that such software probably came with your CD-R/RW or rewritable DVD drive. If you can write to CD or DVD by simply dragging a file to the appropriate drive icon without any additional steps, you're running the correct software.
If you can't, you may need to search your Start menu for the packet-writing program that came with your drive (or with your PC, if the drive came with that). If your CD/DVD-authoring software is Easy CD Creator, the packet writer is called either Drag-To-Disc (for version 6.0) or DirectCD (earlier versions). If you have Nero software, it's called InCD. All you need to do once you've found the program is launch it, and your discs will be as easy to write to as a floppy disk. You can either launch the program before you back up every day, or drag the packet-writing program's icon to your Start menu so that it launches every time you boot.
Your Basic Backup
The fastest, cheapest way to back up your important data is an old-fashioned file backup. Some of the better-known programs for this chore include the $80 Dantz Retrospect Professional and Stomp BackUp MyPC, which sells for about $70. But the one I recommend costs only $19. It's Datahjaelp's Zip Backup to CD, and you can download this shareware program from the company's site. Not only is it cheap and simple, but it compresses the backups into standard.zip files--a popular format that many programs can read. And despite the name, it can back up to DVD and hard drives, as well.
Whether cheap or expensive, these programs simply copy the files--usually compressing them as well--to your CD, DVD, USB drive, or other backup media.
File backup programs generally allow you to create personalized "sets"--your definition of what files and folders should be backed up--so that you don't need to back up everything on the drive. Getting these sets right is especially important if you're backing up to CD, since backing up only the essential files can save you the hassle of swapping discs.
Most file backup programs let you make entries into an "Include List" of files and folders to back up, along with an "Exclude List" of files and folders within the Include List that the program can skip. What belongs in these lists? That depends on your version of Windows. To find out what should go on--and what can stay off--these lists, see "What to Back Up in Windows 2000 and XP" and "What to Back Up in Windows 98 and Me."
These programs offer two ways to back up these sets: full and incremental. A full backup copies every file in the set. An incremental backup copies only those files that have been created or changed since the last backup.
If you're the do-it-yourself type, you can easily create your own backup routine with WinZip (a popular program that I recommend for plenty of other purposes), a few free programs, and some text files. For details, see "Easy Backups With WinZip and Freeware." You can download WinZip 8.1 or 9.0 beta 2 from PC World Downloads.
Cure for the Absent-Minded
A basic file backup isn't a perfect strategy. If you don't remember to run your backup program, nothing gets backed up.
That makes Iomega Automatic Backup, the $40 program formerly known as QuikSync, a good choice if you're forgetful. Automatic Backup runs in the background as you work. When you save a file that's in your Include list, the program copies it to your backup media, saving multiple versions (five of them by default) so you can retrieve last Thursday's version as well as yesterday's.
But this approach has its own flaws. A program that copies every file as you save it can't help but slow down your system. And you still have to remember to attach or insert your backup media when you boot up and remove it when you shut down. Remember, a backup that's left inside the PC won't help you if your computer is stolen.
Let's Include the Kitchen Sink
What do you do if your hard drive dies? Buy and install another one. But then what? If you have a data backup created with Zip Backup to CD or Automatic Backup, you install Windows, then your hardware drivers, then your applications, then your utilities. And then, finally, everything from your backup.
Wouldn't you rather boot from a special CD, then restore everything--Windows, drivers, programs, and data--from a single file? That's why a drive-imaging program is worth your consideration. These aren't absolutely essential (reinstalling everything is a hassle; losing your data is a disaster), but should catastrophe strike, you'll be glad you bought one.
These programs, which include Drive Image and Norton Ghost, both $70 and both now owned by Symantec, don't back up specific files--they back up the entire disk, sector by sector (well, they skip the blank ones and compress the others). In a matter of minutes, they can restore the entire drive to the exact condition it was in when you made the image.
The drive imager I recommend is the $50 Acronis True Image 7.0. Not only is it less expensive, but it has the unique ability to do incremental backups, making it the first imager that can do the job of a conventional backup program. (And yes, you can recover a particular file without restoring your entire disk to an earlier condition.)
With today's auxiliary drives, and software like Zip Backup to CD, Iomega Automatic Backup, and Acronis True Image, there's no reason not to keep your system backed up.
What's your excuse?
What to Back Up in Windows 2000 and XP
The good news here is that Microsoft has put everything you need to back up in one convenient place. The bad news is that it also put a lot of stuff that you don't need to back up in the same place.
Include List:
There, that was easy. Unfortunately, not all companies follow Microsoft's lead and save their data somewhere in this folder. Quicken, for instance, saves its data in C:\Program Files\Quicken, where a file backup is likely to miss it. If you want to include other important files, you'll need to figure out where a program saves its data. You may find the data location in the program's Options, Preferences, or Settings dialog box.
Or you can use Windows' Find or Search tool: Open the program, save some data, then close the program. Then, in Windows Explorer, press F3 to bring up the Find or Search tool. Look for all files on your hard drive created in the last day (the exact way to do this varies with different versions of Windows, but it's pretty easy to determine). Sort the results by date; the data you want will be among the newest files. You may have to add another folder or file to your Include List (My Documents is inside Documents and Settings, so if the program saves its data there, you're set).
For a Quicken fix, see "Put Quicken Data Where It Belongs."
Exclude List:
What to Back Up in Windows 98 and Me
Include List:
And there may be other folders, as well. Not all companies save their data in one of the above folders. Quicken, for instance, saves its data in C:\Program Files\Quicken, where a file backup is likely to miss it. If you want to include other important files, you'll need to figure out where a program saves its data. You may find the data location in the program's Options, Preferences, or Settings dialog box.
Or you can use Windows' Find or Search tool: Open the program, save some data, then close the program. Then, in Windows Explorer, press F3 to bring up the Find or Search tool. Look for all files on your hard drive created in the last day (the exact way to do this varies with different versions of Windows, but it's pretty easy to determine). Sort the results by date; the data you want will be among the newest files. You may have to add another folder or file to your Include List. See "Put Quicken Data Where It Belongs" for a Quicken fix.